Romilly describes the creative process that led to Treehandles
“The deepwood is vanished in these islands -- much, indeed, had vanished before history began -- but we are still haunted by the idea of it. The deepwood flourishes in our architecture, art and above all in our literature. Unnumbered quests and voyages have taken place through and over the deepwood, and fairy tales and dream-plays have been staged in its glades and copses. Woods have been a place of inbetweenness, somewhere one might slip from one world to another, or one time to a former: in Kipling's story Puck of Pook's Hill, it is by right of 'Oak and Ash and Thorn' that the children are granted their ability to voyage back into English history.” The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane